I never really though too much about how fantastic looking some of these "common" flies can be until I started doing some of these stacked images where you really get a sense of the details and textures that are present.

Both images were with a Nikon D200 and a 50/2.8 EL Nikkor reversed on bellows.

Wim... the similarities between our shots, subject and composition, are striking!... it is indeed a "small" world

pp... good observation on the exposure difficulties. Even with careful lighting it takes some extra effort to avoid "blowing out" the highlights around the eyes of many of these flies. Sometimes it's necessary to give less exposure overall than would otherwise be preferred, and then bring up the shadows in photo-editing software. With really difficult subjects it's sometimes necessary to resort (if possible) to shooting the same thing at two different exposures and "retrieving" the highlights from the otherwise underexposed image._________________http://www.krebsmicro.com

I believe the orange lozenge-shaped area is the "anterior spiracle" -- one of several openings into the breathing apparatus.

Visit the Anatomical Atlas of Flies at http://www.ento.csiro.au/biology/fly/fly.html. Click the button labeled "Click here for Atlas". In the popup window, click the tab labeled "Calyptrate" to show the anatomy of Musca domestica, then click on the desired feature for ID.

A diffusion dome (made from a plastic kids toy ball) is attached to the front of the reversed EL Nikkor. The dome is illuminated from the camera side by the two reflectored lights (No "direct" light from these two hit the subject, only that which passes through the dome). The dome is cut to a size where the open end stops just short of the plane of the subject. This allows me to angle in slight bit of direct "hard" light (from the slaved flash seen at bottom right. Normally it is much farther out but I moved it in close to include it in this setup shot.). This helps in situations where the diffuse dome light is too flat. A little bit was used in each of these shots.

The background for these flies were printed up on a matte paper and simply clipped behind the subject. In the summer and fall months I often gather natural materials like leaves or grasses to use as backgrounds. But they are used so out-of-focus that you really can't tell what the background is.

So I maneuver these components around, change power settings, and take test shots until I like what I see. Then I shoot the "stack" and head for the computer.